OS selector does not recognise any OSs

Hello everyone! This is my first post so go gentle on me ...

I bought and installed Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 (build 2.160) with the intention of using it to install one or more Linux distros in a multiple OS boot environment to cohabitate with Windows XP pro on my Acer laptop.

I backed up my hard drive using Acronis True Image Home before starting.

Here is how I partitioned the 111.8 GB H/D:

• 25 GB NTFS Active/Primary partition: Windows XP system

• 68.22 GB NTFS logical partition: data storage for Windows

• 10.41 GB Ext3 logical partition: (intended for Linux installation)

• 5.148 GB FAT 32 logical partition: (intended shared files for all OSs)

• 1.003 GB Linux Swap

• 1.999 GB FAT 16 hidden partition: Acer recovery partition

Following repartitioning, Windows XP still worked (and still does!) as before.

I installed Knoppix 5.2 linux onto the Ext3 partition - this installation reformatted the partition into ReiserFS, but its size remained the same.

From Windows I activated Acronis OS Selector and rebooted. OS selector started as expected and indicated I had two "Unknown Operating Systems" on my computer. It refused, however, to boot either.

I restarted the laptop, skipping OS selector with F6, checked all of my settings from Windows, restarted OS selector in Windows, checked again and restarted the machine.

Once running, OS selector now tells me that I only have one "Unknown Operating System" - which it refuses to boot, of course. But it does not find any other now, no matter what settings I use in the find OS wizard on all of my disk partitions.

I have been reduced to deactivating OS selector altogether and cannot boot into Linux. Arghh!

I'd really appreciate your help getting all of this to work.

Thanks in advance,

HornCologne

 

HornCologne:

Perhaps your Linux bootloader, GRUB, did not install correctly. If you can boot from a Knoppix Live CD, then go to a root shell and type the following:

Code:

grub

to enter the GRUB program. Since you want GRUB to install to your Linux partition, which appears to be the second logical partition on your disk, it would be referred to as (hd0,5) in grub terminology. Install GRUB to this partition:

Code:

root (hd0,5)
setup (hd0,5)

and then exit:

Code:

quit

I'm not an expert on OS Selector, but it should be able to detect that the partition contains a Linux OS when it examines the partition boot record and finds an installation of GRUB.

If this doesn't work for you there are other ways to multiboot Windows and Linux. Post back again and I will be happy to give you alternate suggestions.

 

HornCologne,

Try Mark's suggestion and reinstall GRUB to the Knoppix partition. I currently use OSS to boot into various versions of Ubuntu with GRUB installed into each Ubuntu partition and it works fine.

You might also want to look into problems related to installing Knoppix on your hard drive (check the Knoppix forums). Last I've read they've made progress in making this work better, but it may still be a little rough. I know that previous versions of Knoppix were a pain to install on a hard drive, since it's primary use/function was to run from a cd.

 

Thanks you guys!

I will be trying this out later. 'Course the other big problem right now is that OS Selector also does not recognize Windows at all ... we'll see what it all looks like after re-grubbing Knoppix.

- HC